![]() The master of the ghost story, the Cambridge don MR James, used to read his latest compositions out loud to friends before publishing them. ![]() ![]() Some of the best ghost stories – The Turn of the Screw is the most famous example – begin with this situation: a person telling a story to a group of rapt listeners. For the classic ghost story is a performance. Naturally they begin to tell ghost stories: Christmas is the time for this, when the year is darkest and family or friends are gathered together to be entertained. When the novella opens, he is a man in late middle age, surrounded by adult stepchildren at Christmas. Arthur Kipps is giving us a tale that he is condemned by his own memories to tell. But when it comes to hauntings this traditional description is fitting. Literary critics rarely use this last term, preferring to talk of the "narrator". T his is a ghost story, so we start with the storyteller. ![]()
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